National Perspective: John McCain’s final challenge

From the Vietnam combat of the Lyndon B. Johnson years to the political wars of the Donald Trump era, John McCain III — grandson, son and father of naval officers, Hanoi prisoner of war, lion of Capitol Hill, presidential nominee, keeper of the American flame and defender of the American faith — was at the center of the nation's life.

And when he died Aug. 25 at age 81, the country lost both a conservative and a radical, a public servant who was the servant of no discernible ideology, a principal of both the warrior class and the political class — and a pugnacious pugilist with the fiery temper of Ty Cobb (whom the journalist Bugs Baer once wrote would climb a mountain to punch an echo) and the iconoclastic temperament of Thomas Paine (who was both philosopher and revolutionary).